Notre Dame theologian Gary Anderson’s book Sin: A History, recently published by Yale University Press, examines how understandings and descriptions of sin have changed over two millennia of biblical tradition.

How do you reconcile former enemies in a society shattered by war, genocide or violence? In a new book, Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence, political scientist Ernesto Verdeja answers this question by examining reconciliation efforts in post-conflict regions from Chile to South Africa to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

John Griffin, associate professor of political science, has helped debunk a myth about ideologically extreme legislators in an award-winning paper he co-wrote, raising the question of whether citizens hold elected officials accountable.

On Nov. 20, 1962, President Kennedy signed an executive order prohibiting federally-funded housing agencies from denying mortgages on the basis of race, color, creed or national origin. According to University of Notre Dame sociologist Richard Williams, the dramatic improvement of American family housing security thus begun is now jeopardized both by the current economic crisis and misconceptions of what caused it.

Late last year, James Sullivan, associate professor in the Department of Economics and Econometrics, and the University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer published an article in the American Economic Review related to their ongoing research into ways to measure and improve the well-being of poor families.

Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies is currently hosting Gerald Telfort, the only Fulbright visiting scholar selected from Haiti this academic year in the newly re-launched Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program for Central America and the Caribbean.

This summer, four Notre Dame undergraduates had the rare opportunity to conduct research side-by-side with the famous Irish nun Sister Cyril Mooney, who has turned an elite Catholic school for girls in Kolkata, India, into an education center that welcomes the city’s street children.

Lymphatic filariasis is a parasitic disease caused by microscopic, thread-like worms (Wuchereria bancrofti and Brugia malayi). The disease, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, can cause swelling and decreased function of the lymph system, making it difficult for the body to fight germs and infections.

Notre Dame has launched a new postdoctoral fellowship program that aims to attract scholars from underrepresented groups to the University for research and engagement of issues related to multiculturalism and diversity.

New research by Notre Dame anthropologist Agustin Fuentes states that although Darwin’s basic ideas still form the core of our understandings, recent innovations in evolutionary theory help expand the way we think about evolution.

“Money can’t buy me love,” the Beatles famously sang. And now a new paper by University of Notre Dame economist Kasey S. Buckles and colleagues suggests money, or more precisely the price of marriage, can significantly affect the decision to marry.

In 2002, the American Political Science Assocation awarded Notre Dame the opportunity to publish APSA-CP for four years andrecently announced that APSA-CP will continue to be published at Notre Dame until 2010. Michael Coppedge and Anthony Messina, associate professors of political science, co-edit the journal.

Hachen has teamed with Notre Dame faculty members Albert-László Barabási (Physics) and Gregory Madey (Computer Science and Engineering) to work on a project known as WIPER, which is supported by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

Brownstein is the first scholar to translate the prelude to The Love Suicides at Sonezaki. His translation is part of an article titled, “The Osaka Kannon Pilgrimage and Chikamatsu’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,” which appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies in June 2006.